Join the movement and host a reading of Frederick Douglass in your community in 2025.
Applications open December 16.
- Receive $2,000 in funds to support your event.
- Access informational webinars, a trauma-informed discussion guide, a media kit and promotional flyer, and more.
- Participate in a growing tradition throughout the commonwealth.
The RFDT program provides $2,000 grants to local communities to host a public reading of Douglass’ noted speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
In 2024, a total of 60 communities throughout the commonwealth hosted readings. Nonprofits, cultural centers, libraries, towns, and more are free to design a public program that appeals to local residents. Grantees have featured spoken word artists, discussion groups, musical performances, and other activities intended to help communities reflect deeply on the continuing relevance of Douglass’ words.
“For 2025, Mass Humanities is encouraging communities to use the speech as the foundation to host deeper, continuous conversations about freedom, acknowledgment, repair, and reconciliation,” said Latoya Bosworth, Ph.D., program officer at Mass Humanities. “We are asking ourselves and our host sites: what do we do after we read Frederick Douglass Together? How do we keep the momentum?”
Communities interested in hosting a reading can visit the Reading Frederick Douglass Together grant page on the Mass Humanities website for guidelines (in both English and Spanish) and to submit an application. A complete schedule of submission deadlines is available as well.
If you would like more information about the application process, you can watch a brief webinar created by Dr. Latoya Bosworth, program officer at Mass Humanities, below.
The most celebrated orator of his day, Douglass’ denunciations of slavery and forceful examination of the Constitution challenge us to think about the stories we tell and do not tell, the ideas that they teach or do not teach, and the gaps between our actions and aspirations. To quote Douglass: “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the future.”